Bob Weir David Livingston/Getty Images for NAMM Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Bob Weir, the unassuming singer, songwriter and nuanced rhythm guitarist known as the "other" founding member of the Grateful Dead, has died, his family announced Saturday on Instagram. He was 78. Weir "transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues," they said. He was diagnosed in July but returned to his hometown stage the next month for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. His family added: "Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong." As the leader of such bands as Dead and Company, Phil Lesh and Friends, Further, Rat Dog and Wolf Bros, Weir carried on the Dead's legacy following the sudden death of bandmate Jerry Garcia in 1995. Asked in a 2014 interview with Vanity Fair if he "takes psychedelics, still, once in a while?" the forthcoming rock star replied: "Not much. Every now and again. I haven't done it so much recently, but over the last decade, for instance, if one of the bands I'm hangin' with, and all the guys want to take mushrooms, I'm not going to ... you know, I'll go there. But not a whole lot." Weir and lead guitarist Garcia formed the Dead in 1965 with Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica), Lesh (bass) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and he wrote and/or sang on such songs as "Sugar Magnolia," "Playing in the Band," "Truckin,' " "Throwing Stones," "Let It Grow," "I Need a Miracle," "One More Saturday Night," "Let It Rain," "Mexicali Blues," "Hell in a Bucket," "Cassidy" and "The Other One," to name just a few. The last one, which appeared on the Dead's second album, 1968's Anthem of the Sun, became perhaps Weir's most widely performed tune, and a 2014 documentary about him, directed by Mike Fleiss, was titled The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir. Executive produced by Justin Kreutzmann (Bill's son), it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. In the film, Weir said that he "took LSD, every Saturday without fail, for about a year" and served as Garcia's "bag man," holding onto and dispensing his drugs. With the boyish Weir expertly filling in between Garcia's upbeat guitar work and Lesh's innovative bass lines, the Dead - the most famous jam band of all time - took to the road for long stretches, playing improvisational, psychedelic shows that lasted for hours, much to the delight of the tie-dyed Deadheads. In an interview published in March 1973, Weir told Cameron Crowe about how the group fashioned its free-form shows. "We have certain numbers that we use for certain pivot points, of course," he said. "We have the crowd pleasers for the end. A little bit into the second set, you can expect us to do a number that we're gonna stretch out on ... for like 45 minutes or an hour. And you can expect us to pull out of that with some fairly forceful rock 'n' roll just to shake out the cobwebs of the people that are ... well, we space out on the space-out numbers, and if we may be losing some of our audience at that point, we bring them back with a little rock 'n' roll. "We try to take the numbers that we stretch out on and develop them very gradually from level to level to level so that we're not all of a sudden introducing them to a whole new weird realm of music. I guess essentially, if it makes sense to them, then they can keep up with us; if it doesn't, then they don't. You have to have that positive feedback from an audience to keep you going." The modest, fame-fleeing Weir, known for wearing shorts onstage - he also soaked his T-shirts in beer coolers to beat the heat of the hot lights - had big hands that enabled him to "voice chords that most people can't reach," Garcia once said, "and he can pull them off right in the flow of playing." "We all feel Bob's the finest rhythm guitarist on wheels right now. He's like my left hand," Garcia noted in a 1978 interview. "We have a long, serious conversation going on musically, and the whole thing is of a complementary nature. We have fun, and we've designed our playing to work against and with each other. His playing, in a way, really puts my playing in the only kind of meaningful context it could enjoy." Garcia died of a heart attack in a California rehab center at age 53 on Aug. 9, 1995, but Weir, Lesh and others soldiered on in such groups as